nd?"

"Is M'sieur Philip Darcambal, the husband of Josephine," said Jean.

As the Missioner gripped Philip's hand his thin fingers had in them the
strength of steel.

"Ladue told me that she had found her man," he said. "May God bless
you, my son! It was I, Father George, who baptized her years and years
ago. For me she made Adare House a home from the time she was old
enough to put her tiny arms about my neck and lisp my name. I was on my
way to see you when night overtook me at Ladue's. I am not a fighting
man, my son. God does not love their kind. But it was Christ who flung
the money-changers from the temple--and so I have come to fight."

The others were close about them now, and Jean was telling of the
ambush in the forest. Purple veins grew in the Missioner's forehead as
he listened. There were no questions on the lips of the others. With
dark, tense faces and eyes that burned with slumbering fires they heard
Jean. There were the grim and silent Foutelles, father and son, from
the Caribou Swamp. Tall and ghostlike in the firelight, more like
spectre than man, was Janesse, a white beard falling almost to his
waist, a thick marten skin cap shrouding his head, and armed with a
long barrelled smooth-bore that shot powder and ball. From the fox
grounds out on the Barren had come "Mad" Joe Horn behind eight huge
malemutes that pulled with the strength of oxen. And with the Missioner
had come Ladue, the Frenchman, who could send a bullet through the head
of a running fox at two hundred yards four times out of five. Kaskisoon
and his Crees had not arrived, and Philip knew that Jean was
disappointed.

"I heard three days ago of a big caribou herd to the west," said
Janesse in answer to the half-breed's inquiry. "It may be they have
gone for meat."

They drew close about the fire, and the Foutelles dragged in a fresh
birch log for the flames. "Mad" Joe Horn, with hair and beard as red as
copper, hummed the Storm Song under his breath. Janesse stood with his
back to the heat, facing darkness and the west. He raised a hand, and
all listened. For sixty years his world had been bounded by the four
walls of the forests. It was said that he could hear the padded
footfall of the lynx--and so all listened while the hand was raised,
though they heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, the crackling of
the fire, and the unrest of the dogs in the timber behind them. For
many seconds Janesse did not lower his hand; and then,